Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow was originally going to helm Star Wars: Episode IX, but reported creative differences led to the filmmaker parting ways with Lucasfilm in September 2017. They then brought back The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams, who went back to the drawing board and delivered the critically panned The Rise of Skywalker.
Since then, concept art and leaked story details have been shared online for Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates, and it's been widely agreed that his finale had the potential to be better than Abrams'.
In a recent Collider interview, Trevorrow opened up on he and Lucasfilm taking "totally different paths" to approaching the Skywalker Saga finale, adding: "That was just an experience that, obviously you can imagine, it can get to the point of being traumatic when there’s something that you care about that much and you’ve invested that much in it."
"But that’s one of the things that you accept when you take on any role in film, especially when you become a storyteller, that there are gonna be heartbreaks," he continued. "There’s gonna be crushing disappointments and then there’s gonna be victories and hopefully they’ll balance out in the end."
It's certainly a shame we never got to see Trevorrow's vision for Episode IX play out on screen, but perhaps a #ReleaseTheTrevorrowCut campaign could lead to Disney allowing him to make Duel of the Fates and replace The Rise of Skywalker canonically? Yeah, don't bank on it!
On the plus side, Trevorrow has now returned to the Jurassic World franchise for 2021's Dominion.